I have mixed feelings about this episode, so the writers obviously did their job. Part of those mixed feelings involves frustration that they did their job so late in the series.
The wild whiplashing moments of the final episode were almost insulting. It's like the writers came to work one day, were told the money's run out, and they'd better stop dragging their feet and get on with a story if they ever planned to. So let's fold and refold this story to guarantee there's nothing left. The last episode gave glimpses into several far more interesting stories that were never told. It was like the writers said, "Here's all the cool stuff we could have done, instead of the painfully tedious stuff we wasted your time with."
This episode is a hurried wrap up to fill in as many gaps as possible in the previous episodes, as shown through the eyes of the young boy Cole, who seems to be the most stable resident of this surreal little town. It guarantees that we never make connections to the characters by hurrying them along through their own timelines so that we merely observe, we don't take part.
In the first episode, and the promotional trailers, we are told two very important things, that everyone is connected to the Loop, and that not everything makes sense. The shared connection is that the Loop seems to make people miserable and destroy lives.
This episode is a fittingly morose end to a morose world, but it does it in a way that makes you satisfied there's nothing more to concern yourself with.
